Design II final project presentation: Fiona Chen

Instructor Henry Mateo is known for going above and beyond the call for his students, and this past quarter was no different. Henry arranged for his Design II: Collateral Communication students to share their final projects at Brand Knew where notable guest critiquers from the LA design scene were on hand to give our students feedback.

Student Fiona Chen shared her work with us:

Name: Foray

Fiona says:

This project was the most challenging, yet fulfilling projects I have done so far in the DCA certificate program! I chose to create an entire bakery/cafe based around a rustic, modern hip, homemade vibe that is quite popular right now. “Foray” was a name taken from the French word from forest, with an “American” twist to the name for readability.

I tried to appeal to a more hipster audience of late twenty and thirty year olds, as well as young, up and coming families in places like Atwater Village or South Pasadena. I was very much inspired by the look of cabins, forest (and trees of course), and a feeling of warmth and coziness.

I wanted the whole brand to convey this vibe by making it look a little loose, and handmade, and with the use of warm colors. The trend right now is a lot of artisan, modern, hip coffee shops, and I wanted to explore the trend with more of a craft and rustic perspective to it. The whole process was definitely long and hard, but it really was a good challenge in terms of seeing what worked and didn’t in terms of building boxes, and using new processes like screen printing. I had never made boxes before, and Henry really challenged us to think “outside the box,” literally. I felt really good about how my bakery box “kit” turned out, and with a little trial and error, I think it worked out well and was a different way of presenting packaged goods. I had a blast with this project and it definitely presented me with several new challenges, in a very good way. I hope that came through in the final result of my project!

Project 1 was a fragrance brand that was completely different from my second project. It leaned toward more of a minimal vibe towards an upscale audience. The result was “Opus” meaning composition. I used a diefold for the box (which required a lot of trial and error!) and a clear opacity adhesive for the bottle. My lookbook used different size cut pages to emphasize the shapes and lines I used as inspiration for this look.